He was once the director of Predator, Die Hard and The Hunt For Red October, but for the past few years, John McTiernan has been a bit too busy with other things to make movies – indeed he hasn’t made a movie since Basic in 2003. However he’s now planning to return, with Variety reporting that he signed on to direct an action thriller called Shrapnel, about two war veterans who hunt each other in a game of cat and mouse.
There is a bit of a problem though, and that’s what he’s been doing for the last few years. One of the main reasons he’s had difficulty getting a job is because he was caught up in the police investigation into superemely dodgy private eye Anthony Pellicano, who was found guilty of wiretapping and racketeering for numerous high profile clients and sent to jail.
While most of the big names in the case had their involvement discreetly handled and weren’t prosecuted even if they were thought to have been involved in illegal acts, McTiernan wasn’t so lucky because he was caught lying to the FBI in a phone call. After being charged and sent to court over the matter in 2006, he intially plead guilty, but ever since then he’s been involved in ever more complicated legal wrangling over whether he should have been allowed to withdraw his guilty plea and whether the fourth-month jail sentence he was handed was right or not. With that hanging over him, directing movies hasn’t really been an option.
Nevertheless the companies behing Shrapnel have hired him, and are obviously hoping that with a final sentencing on McTiernan’s court case due at the beginning of October, he won’t be locked up for months and that he’ll be free to concentrate on their film.